South Korea`s Services Commission (FSC), the country`s financial regulatory and authority, has announced the launch of a blockchain project for financial services this year.

Speaking to The Korea Herald (koreaherald.com), Jeong Eun-bo, vice chairman of the Financial Services Commission, said: “Blockchain technology has great potential to be used in finance and various other fields”.

“Since South Korea has the world’s top-level ICT technology, it will be able to lead the international trend in the blockchain sector if the government, related industries and experts pool their wisdom.”, he added.

In December last year, South Korea hosted its first blockchain consortium. An event that was attended by 21 investment companies and five blockchain technology firms that have signed a memorandum-of-understanding (MoU) to develop distributed ledger solutions, reported cryptocoinnews.com.

The country has previously shown its efforts to become an attractive country for FinTech start-ups. Cryptocoinnews.com has written about South Korea`s plan to invest $2.65 billion into the FinTech industry over the next three years.

“The government will push for the systematization of digital currency on a full scale in tandem with a global trend in the U.S., Japan and other countries.”, said Yim Jong-yong, chairman of the Financial Services Comission in a speech at the 12 th FinTech Center Demo Day event, in a quote that appeared in cryptocoinnews.com at the time.

South Korea`s interest in FinTech can lead to the introduction of bitcoin regulation in 2017, according to cryptocoinnews.com. The report continues by saying that a digital currency task force was set by FSC in late 2016 to focus on regulatory and licensing parameters for bitcoin exchanges. This happens in a country that sees an increased use of bitcoin, concludes cryptocoinnews.com.